


Part of the Design

by nazaleas



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Comfort, DrummerWolf, F/M, Fluff, Visions, mostly just being sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nazaleas/pseuds/nazaleas
Summary: “Nobody’s gonna use us. Nobody.”
Relationships: Amanda Brotzman/Martin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 58





	Part of the Design

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everythingremainsconnected](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingremainsconnected/gifts), [GuenVanHelsing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuenVanHelsing/gifts).



The attack came on suddenly – the collar of her jacket was a chain, choking her, bruising her flesh – and even though she had tools now, even though she knew what to do with the pain and the fear, there was still that instant of panic, that moment of _oh shit oh shit_ as her brain scrambled to process what was it was seeing and feeling. Then her boys were there, four points of a compass, surrounding her and siphoning off the energy born of the lies her nerves were telling her, filling her vision with shimmering blue light and that bone-deep sense of relief.

And then came the vision.

That was why Amanda was currently staring at the ceiling of a rinky little room in an old school motor court motel somewhere in eastern Idaho. She’d asked Martin if they could stay the night someplace with real beds, and he’d agreed – with that look on his face that said she didn't have to explain right then, but an eventual explanation would be nice.

She’d paid for their rooms out of the Indoor Accommodation Fund, of which she was the keeper. Actually, she was the keeper of all The Funds, because the Rowdies didn’t really think or care about money. Somehow there were always beer and smokes and gas for the van, and that was all they needed. And since she had joined them, there always seemed to be money for food and eyeliner and the occasional stay in a motel room, too. She was truly coming around to Dirk’s view that the universe would arrange things if she just let it. She was learning to catch the pieces of it, to see the connections, to understand how events could begin in one place and weave and swerve their way to an unexpected destination. Like her whole life, honestly. Though right now, she wasn't sure how comforting a thought that was.

 _Rap rap rap._ Knuckles on the door, and Martin’s voice. “Drummer. Ya decent?”

“Nope.”

“Cool. Wanna let me in?”

She got up, smiling in spite of herself, and opened the door. He looked her up and down, noting her lack of indecency with a disapproving frown. “Liar.” He handed her a cheap, garishly colored gas station coffee cup, filled with doubtlessly shitty gas station coffee. They'd learned that coffee, even the shitty kind, could sometimes help with the headaches and malaise left by a bad vision. She accepted it and took a sip, wrinkling her nose.

“Can't really pull an ‘I'm fine, no big deal’ with a bunch of guys who can smell emotions, can I?” She sat back down on the bed.

“Not really, no.” He shed his vest, draping it over the back of the room’s solitary chair. “So what’d you see?”

She took another swig of coffee, then set it in on the bedside table, taking a deep breath. “Tell me about Blackwing.”

He went very still, looking at her with hooded eyes, his jaw tight, his arms folded. Finally, after what felt like eons, he swallowed, forcing out a single word.

“Why?”

She exhaled. She didn’t know she’d been holding her breath. “Because…I saw symbols. Like literal, actual symbols. I recognized one of them. It was on those jumpsuits you and Gripps and Cross were wearing when I pulled you into Wendimore. But there were dozens of them. And I saw this black guy, standing in the middle of a whirlwind, and he was trying to catch it with a butterfly net, which looked _ridiculous_ , only he was pulling things out of the air and putting them in boxes. I saw that man, the one with the mustache, the one who knew your names, saying he was sorry, that it was out of his hands. I saw…white rooms, and metal hallways. I saw bars, and locks, and cages.”

He sat slowly on the bed beside her, almost absently pulling off his boots. He was silent again for a fearsomely long time, before he said quietly, “It was a cage. A cage for people who could do weird shit. Who _were_ weird shit. They wanted to know why, and how. And how to use us.”

Suddenly, a memory filled her mind – the swirling, dancing, flickering firefly expanse just behind the curtain of reality. Some lights pulsed brighter than others, some spun together, some ricocheted apart. It was vast and unruly and seemed so chaotic, except that it wasn’t. Not really. It was just too much, too complicated. Those bright lights; they weren’t meant to be _used_. Not by anything so small as other people. It just didn’t work like that. “That isn’t possible,” she said.

“Well, give ‘em an A for effort, cuz they just keep tryin’.” She shook her head, and he reached for her, sliding a hand under her hair, holding the nape of her neck, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Manda. You don’t get it. It ain’t just me and the boys they want now. They’ll want you too, on account of that vision-havin’ brain of yours. What you can do…hell, we don’t even know what you can do.” She tried to drop her gaze, but his hand held steady. “I can’t let that happen. WE can’t let that happen. You understand that, right?”

She nodded tightly, trying to swallow away the lump forming in her throat. “Nobody’s gonna use us. Nobody.” He nodded back, threading his fingers up through her hair, keeping his eyes on hers, fixed as if she were the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. Anyone else looking at her like that, she’d demand to know what the hell their deal was, but with Martin, she soaked it in, she basked in it. He made her feel like she actually was fascinating, and no one could ever be allowed to take that from her.

The lump was getting worse; now her eyes were getting wet. Dammit, Amanda Brotzman was not a crier. She was tough. She was punk. She was a freakin’ witchikookoo.

She was also stupid in love with her whole crazy life, but especially with the man sitting beside to her. And she wasn’t ashamed of that, but her quivering chin was making it hard to explain herself. He raised a curious eyebrow, and she managed, “I just- I love you so much. All of you. It's crazy, I never thought I could ever-”

He nodded. “Love you too, drummer girl.”

That tore it. The tears had nowhere to go but down, spilling down her cheeks, and she let them. Martin wiped at them with gentle amusement, his fingers coming back black. “Your war paint’s runnin’.”

“Shut up,” she ordered with a watery laugh. A smile - quick, insouciant, cheeky – flashed like lightning on his face.

“Make me.”

God, that smile. He knew what he was doing, damn him. And so did she. She seized his open collar, kissing him hard. His hands dropped to grab her waist, steadying her as she rose up on her knees, letting her bear him back onto the bed. For a little while, she managed to shut him up.

* * *

Much later, Martin lay awake, watching the play of parking lot lights and neon creeping under the edge of the cheap curtains covering the room’s sole window. A part of him wanted a cigarette, but that would mean disturbing Amanda, which rendered it impossible. She was curled against his side, her head tucked into the hollow of his throat, her dark hair spilling across his chest. If she was comfortable, this was where he would stay. What she wanted, she got.

He toyed gently with a strand of her hair, twisting it around a finger. This was new, but it was good. At first it had just been him and Gripps and Cross. And they had fit together tight, the gears in a well-engineered machine. And then there had been Vogel, scared and lonely, and what do you know, it worked even better with him clicked into place. They had been a perfect circle, a closed system, and then along came the Drummer.

And she fit in the middle of the Rowdy Three seamlessly, like it was where she’d always been intended to be, like how she fit against him now. Now they were overlapping circles, him and Amanda, him and his boys, her and all of them. It was a more complicated design, but damn if it didn’t make perfect sense. Martin didn’t go in for that “woo Universe” crap the British twerp was into, but it sure seemed to him that this whole thing had been intended to be just the way it was, and he wasn’t one to argue with what worked.

Which was why, if they were going to take this fight to Blackwing, try and beat them at their own game, they couldn’t miss. Because the only thing more intolerable than going back in the cage would be seeing them put Amanda in one. She was fierce and free, and it would be beyond a crime to try and clip those wings.

She sighed, shifting in her sleep. Funny how small and fragile she looked, when he knew good and well that little body could barely contain the sum total of who she was. He hadn’t been exaggerating before – if he knew anything about Blackwing (and he knew far more than he cared to), they would be interested in the kind of power she possessed, dangerously interested. Weird thing was, he wasn’t mad about it, and he definitely wasn’t scared. It just _was_. Blackwing would want her, him and his boys wouldn’t let that happen. Simple as that. She might well be, he reflected, the most important person in the universe, and not just because of how he felt about her. And that, when he thought about it, was pretty damn cool.


End file.
